


Being Brave

by FleetofShippyShips



Series: Prompted Harry Potter Works [48]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Ending Relationship, HP: EWE, M/M, Post-Hogwarts, Sad Ending, Secret Relationship, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 07:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14184405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FleetofShippyShips/pseuds/FleetofShippyShips
Summary: Neville never expected Draco to be sentenced to Azkaban, but then he is. They're shifting him soon, and Neville needs to see him, even if it's just for the last time.





	Being Brave

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by @quentinkowalski (Prompt: Meant to be but kept apart. "I really think I could've loved you"), prompt line embedded within the fic. Originally posted on my [@drarryville](http://drarryville.tumblr.com) sideblog.
> 
>  
> 
> **Please take note of the tags SAD ENDING, and UNHAPPY ENDING**

Fear is such a normal feeling for Neville. So normal, that he almost doesn't notice how bad it is until his hands are shaking so much he has to hide them in the pockets of his cloak. Being afraid has just been the way he’s felt for most of his life, he supposes he can’t blame himself for not being fully aware of it.

_ “There’s a sort of bravery in it, I think. To be so afraid all the time, and not only carry on, but to put yourself in situations that make it worse. To do things that make it worse, because you know they are right. You don’t realise how brave you are.” _

Angry with himself, he forces the voice out of his head. That memory always surfaces at the worst moments. Shaking his head, he glances over at the Auror on duty. The Auror stares back at him, stony-faced. The shift change is soon. In fact, it’s late. Neville was never supposed to linger here so long.

Maybe that’s why he’s suddenly so aware of the fear. Why his hands are starting to shake. What he’s doing is illegal. Or...well...maybe not illegal, he’s not actually sure, but certainly against Ministry policy. The Auror that Harry set Neville up with could get fired. Neville could be arrested if his intentions are assumed to be violent.

In fact, he isn’t sure why the stony-faced Auror hasn’t challenged his reasons for lingering.

Then again, the man had called him ‘Longbottom’ before Neville had even introduced himself and stated his false purpose for being there. So maybe the others haven’t been lying about how far that war hero nonsense goes. If it was war hero nonsense that Harry has cashed in on.

No. He’s promised himself he won’t think about that. Harry had spent months as the Ministry’s top Undesirable, and yet somehow has an in with the department? That defies believe even with the restructure immediately following the war.

No. He needs to stop thinking about that. The less he knows, the better. Harry had been reluctant to help him with this anyway, Neville didn’t want to question it. He was lucky Harry had come through for him in the end.

“You’re late.”

Neville startles so badly he almost falls off his chair. The shift change, at last. The stony-faced Auror who’s been staring at him for the last thirty-three minutes is finally looking away. Looking at the Auror who is relieving him, whose back is to Neville.

Not that it matters. He doesn’t know what he looks like, and he’s forgotten his name. Harry told him to write it down. He should have listened. 

“Bumped into Shacklebolt,” the new Auror explains. “You don’t find excuses to leave when the Minister starts talking to you.”

Stony-face snorts. “Don’t let it get to your head. He’s been making the rounds.”

Neville swallows and tries to slow his breathing. His hands are still shaking inside the pockets of his robes. He’d laugh at himself for being so afraid after everything he’d been through at Hogwarts, and during the battle, but then, it’s not really the potential lawbreaking that has him terrified.

It’s what the lawbreaking gets him.

“I’m not covering for you if one of the bastards in there ends up dead tonight,” Stony-face says roughly, casting a dark look towards Neville that makes his breathing only speed right back up again. 

“You were off duty as of forty minutes ago,” the new Auror says. “Technically. My name is on the roster, in any case.”

Stony-face mutters something low under his breath, and Neville looks down at his lap. Of course that’s what they think. That’s what Harry thought too. Neville had felt his stomach twist painfully when he’d lied about his reasons.

Even if looking for closure wasn’t actually a lie.

“Shut up and get home to that mutt of yours. None of us want to hear you whining that she was barking and keeping you awake all night because you didn’t give her enough attention.”

Stony-face scowls over at Neville again, and he quickly looks at his lap once more, cursing himself for looking up. He just wants this over with.

He has no delusions. He’s going to regret this. It’s going to hurt.

If only knowing that could actually stop him.

As Stony-face stomps off towards the lifts, Neville doesn't bother waiting until he’s out of sight. There’s no point now. He gets up off the uncomfortable chair on the opposite wall, and strides across the room to the desk the new Auror is settling at.

“You have friends in powerful places,” the Auror mutters, pulling his wand from his robes. 

Neville doesn’t even bother taking in his appearance. He’ll only forget what he looks like the moment he’s through the doors.

“Yeah, well, he just saved the world,” he mutters, wondering again how Harry had managed it. As far as Neville’s heard, Minister Shacklebolt has been cracking down hard on corruption in the Ministry. The Auror doesn't even look phased that the Minister for Magic had talked to him right before he was about to do something that could get him fired. Or worse. Neville knows he would have fainted, even after everything he’s been through.

As the Auror flicks his wand at the doors he’s just started guarding, he makes a tutting sound. “You’re all too fucking young, if you ask me.”

“Try telling him that,” Neville answers. Anyone who tries gets a right earful. Harry’s not quite past being sensitive about how everyone assumes he had a choice in all the things he did.

The Auror just snorts and shakes his head. “Third cell. The lines on the floor indicate the boundaries of the privacy spells. Once inside the lines, no other cells in the block can hear what you say. Only the occupant of the cell you’re facing.”

Neville nods, retrieving his wand from his pocket and laying it on the desk. The Auror just shakes his head, sliding it to one side.

“You could have taken that with you,” he says, before gesturing at the doors again. “I just assumed they took it in the atrium.”

That had been Neville’s expectation too. There had been a lot of fuss about the new security procedures at the Ministry in the last few weeks. But one look at his name tag, and he’d just been ushered through the building without so much as a security check.  

He has a lot of questions for Harry that he doesn’t want answered.

“How long do I have?” he asks.

“Up to six hours if you want,” the Auror says, settling back in his chair and already looking bored. “I don’t care, and I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Neville shakes his head and pushes through the doors before he can talk himself out of it. He walks quickly past the first two cells, not even looking to see who’s in them, ignoring everything he hears, until he steps past the first line on the floor in front of the third cell. Then he stops.

Of all the things he expects to hear first, laughter isn’t one of them. But it's exactly what Draco does. It’s quiet, but unmistakable. His shoulders are shaking with it. It makes the too large shirt slip from his bony shoulders until one whole shoulder and half a collarbone is exposed.

It makes him look incredibly small.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Draco finally asks, once he stops laughing. He doesn’t get up from his bed, if it can even be called that when it’s no more than a concrete slab with a thin blanket. In the far right corner of the cell, he’s sitting at the furthest end of it, with his back to the wall, facing the bars that separate them.

Neville steps close to the bars, as if he can see more than the pathetic shell of a person Draco has become in the months since he was dragged from Hogwarts with his parents.

But there’s nothing there. Draco’s expression is flat and bored. His eyes are dull.

“I tried to get here sooner,” he finds himself mumbling, even though he knows this is a bad idea, and isn’t sure if it’s worth trying to salvage.

“You did a bang up job.”

“Don’t act like it isn’t your fault you’re in here.” The words are out before Neville realises he’s saying them. He rests his shaking hands on the bars and tries to pretend that he has some power here.

It’s a complete and utter waste of time. He’s got no clue what he’s doing. He doesn’t have a plan. All plans had gone out the window when Draco’s sentence had been read.

Draco closes his eyes. “You’re still a stupid, brave idiot then,” he mutters. “Always so fucking brave. How the fuck did you get in here with all the new security?”

Neville swallows against a dry throat. “Harry,” he says, even though he probably shouldn’t. He doesn’t think that anyone can make trouble for Harry, not now at least. Not so soon after. 

But if anyone could…

“How is that gigantic tosspot?” Draco sounds like anyone but himself, he even has his eyes still closed, like he’s just waiting for Neville to leave so he can fall asleep from boredom. 

Neville wants to leave. Turn around and get himself back home. But if he doesn’t take this last chance, he knows he’ll regret it. 

Even if he winds up regretting it anyway.

“Stop that,” he murmurs. “Just...just stop, alright?”

Draco opens his eyes. It’s like several layers are peeled back at once, and his expression is hard and full of things Neville doesn’t want to see.

“Why are you here?” Draco asks. 

Neville rests his face against the bars and closes his eyes. There’s nothing but pain behind them, once he lets it in. “I needed to see you.”

“You saw me at my trial, and those few minutes with my defence in the first recess.”

Neville doesn’t open his eyes as he hears Draco get up off his bed and walk over. Draco could reach through the bars and strangle him and he’s not sure he’d mind

“It’s not the same,” he whispers. “And when they read the sentence—”

“It could be worse.” Draco sounds much closer now. 

Neville keeps his eyes closed. “You should have let me speak for you,” he says, shivering from the way his own voice cracks.

Crying is the last thing he wants to do right now.

“It wouldn’t have helped,” Draco says, and Neville keeps his eyes shut even when he feels the tips of Draco’s fingers on his face. “The good you saw me do was only because I liked you. Not because I’m a good person. I didn’t help anyone else. Only you. No one else mattered.”

Neville pulls away from his touch and faces the other way. He really wishes he could deny Draco’s words, but he knows he can’t. It’s hard to deny it after he lied to Harry about why he wanted to get a face to face with him. He knows no one will understand or accept what had happened between them in that awful year at Hogwarts. He himself barely understands it. He knows it’s because he was Draco’s exception, not evidence of a desire, or ability, to do better. He’d had to keep reminding himself over and over so that he wouldn’t keep hoping for better.

Draco had been locked on his path years before they’d fumbled their way into something in the dark and empty halls of a very different Hogwarts.

“It wouldn’t have killed you to try harder,” he mutters, even knowing it’s a lie.

“That’s exactly what it would have done,” Draco says, not indulging him for a moment. “Maybe in another time and place, maybe in another life, I could have been better. But not this life.”

Maybe in another life, Neville never would have been so injured that he’d needed saving. In another life, Draco would never have looked any closer at him. Would never have found a reason to see anything that appealed to him.

In another time and place, Neville wouldn’t have been so desperate for aid that he let Draco help him in the first place, and learned that underneath all that hate and anger there was something better, unable to get out. There, but also not there. Not in any way that really mattered.

“I hate this,” he whispers. 

“This is always where things were headed,” Draco says. “You didn’t seriously expect anything different, did you? It was death or Azkaban for me. It was from the moment he came back. Regardless of who won.”

Neville turns in time to see Draco swipe angrily at his eyes, but when he steps closer to the bars, Draco steps back.

“This is all bullshit anyway!” Draco hisses. “Even without all that, there was never a future for us. Coming here was pathetic. Seeking comfort with each other in that hell hole doesn’t mean anything!”

“Then why are you crying?” Neville hisses right back, stepping close to the bars and reaching through. His fingers brush Draco’s shirt, but Draco manages to step back in time to avoid being caught.

“Just leave,” Draco snaps, swiping at his eyes again. “What’s the point of this? It’s over. By the time I’m out of Azkaban I’ll have lost my mind. I guess I’ll get to meet your parents when they throw me in the Thickey Ward. If they’re still alive by then.”

The surge of anger that rushes through Neville escapes as an odd growling sound. “Shut your mouth about my parents!”

Rather than bite back, Draco just seems to sag. “Why won’t you just leave?” he asks, sounding tired and pained. “What do I have to say? There’s no point in you being here, Neville. What use is this? You’re only hurting yourself.”

Neville can’t find the words to explain his need to see Draco again, so he keeps his mouth shut. He’s standing close enough to be lightly pressing against the bars again, hoping Draco will wander closer.

“So we got along surprisingly well once you stopped expecting me to do double the damage I healed every time I helped you,” Draco says, still sounding tired, but moving a little closer. “So we didn’t hate each other after all once we got to know each other. None of that matters now.”

Finally close enough, Neville reaches through the bars to grab a fistful of his shirt to pull him closer.

“It matters to me,” he whispers, even though no one else can hear anything they say. “You matter to me.”

Draco laughs. It’s weak, and low, and a little too much like sobbing. “I don’t deserve to matter to you. You were always too good for me.”

Neville reaches his other hand through to wipe the tears from Draco’s face. His tears are so familiar they’re almost soothing. After the first time Draco had let Neville see him cry, he hadn’t bothered hiding it again. Sometimes they’d tucked themselves away in a dark corner of the castle and just cried together.

A lot of people had spent a lot of time crying that year.

Being with Draco had been one of the only times Neville hadn’t had to be so strong for everyone else. When he’d got to show just how scared and hurt and tired he was too.

It was much the same for Draco, he knows.

“That never stopped me,” he says.

Draco closes his eyes and shudders. **“I really think I could've loved you,** ” he whispers. “If we’d just had a real chance.”

Neville closes his eyes too. Closure isn’t meant to hurt this bad, is it?

“I do love you,” he admits. It’s not the right time to say it. It’s something he should have said sooner. Sometimes he can’t help but wonder if he had just said it sooner, if Draco might have…

But it’s pointless to think of that. There’s a reason he’s never told anyone. There’s a reason he hides it still. Because he knows that as much as he does love Draco, and as oddly easy it was to fall in love with him during the horror that was Hogwarts in their Seventh Year, he knows that Draco could never have changed.

It had just been too late for him.

He knows that he can’t tell anyone what they had because even he knows that he shouldn't love someone like Draco Malfoy, not after all the things he’s done.

“Why’d you have to tell me that?” Draco whispers brokenly.

“Should’ve said it sooner,” Neville says, opening his eyes to see Draco had moved close enough that just a little more will allow them to kiss, with their faces awkwardly pressed against the bars. “Before...all this.”

Draco sighs. “All this started long before we…”

“You don’t deserve so many years in Azkaban,” Neville says. 

“You need to leave, Neville,” Draco says, reaching through the bars to cup Neville’s face. “We had something, but now it’s over. You need to move on.” 

Even as he says this, Draco pulls Neville closer, until their lips are touching, but Neville can feel the bars against his face more than he can feel Draco.

And then it’s over.

“Go home. Go be with your friends. Find something to distract yourself with. This is over,” Draco says, with more finality in his voice. “You didn’t change me. No one could have changed me. I was in too deep. There was no way out. I made my bed, now I have to lie in it, as they say. I won’t drag you down with me.”

It’s like something is gouging out Neville’s insides. He feels so empty. 

“You could have loved me, or you did love me?” he finds himself asking. He’s not even sure knowing will do him any good, but he finds has to know.

Draco closes his eyes and rests his forehead against the bars. “I love you as much as I’m capable of loving anyone. Enough to care, enough to help you, but not enough to abandon my family or get myself killed. I’m not brave like you.”

Neville rubs at his eyes. “I would have helped you.”

“I know,” Draco whispers. “That’s why we both know I’m not good enough for you. I knew, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t even try.”

The fact he could say so as openly as that made Neville doubt the truth of it. Maybe he would have tried. Maybe if they’d just had more time…

“You won’t be mad by the time you’re out,” he says, instead of everything else he’s thinking. “You’re stronger than that.”

Draco meets his gaze for a long, tense moment. “I hope so,” he says, and the honesty of it makes Neville shiver. 

He can’t be so honest. He couldn’t even tell Harry the real reason why he wanted to talk to Draco. Even when Harry had kept trying to get the truth out of him, unsatisfied with the vague excuse of needing closure.

Deep down he himself felt like loving Draco was wrong, even if he couldn’t stop. And Draco probably knew that. 

Neville hates the idea that that might have been a part of why Draco never tried.

“I’ll be there for you if you need me. Once you get out.”

Draco snorts softly. “No you won’t. You’ll have a brilliant, happy life, and you won’t want me darkening your doorstep.”

Neville clenches his jaw and glares at him. “I will be there for you.”

Draco just shakes his head. “You deserve the world, Neville. I doubt there’s even anyone out there good enough to deserve you, but I hope you find them.”

Anger makes Neville step away from the bars again. Turning and facing the other wall doesn’t help. He can feel Draco’s eyes on him. 

“I care less about what I deserve than what I want,” he insists.

“Well you can’t have me now,” Draco replies. “You need to move on.”

Neville makes a frustrated sound and turns to look at him again. His frustration dies when he sees how defeated Draco looks.

“It’s not that easy,” he says, even though he knows Draco is probably even more aware of that than he is.

“Coming here can’t have been easy, but you did it anyway,” Draco says. “Just walk away. One foot after the other. Staying and prolonging this is only making it worse. For both of us.”

“I should have spoken up for you at your hearing anyway,” Neville mutters. He’d regretted it the moment the opportunity had passed.

Draco’s lips twitch into a sad smile. “I asked you not to. You were respecting my wishes.”

“I was being an idiot!” Neville snaps. “I was letting you be an idiot!”

Draco presses close to the bars. “Don’t wallow in regrets. You did what I asked, and I’m glad that you did. Your testimony would have done nothing but alienate you from everyone you care about. It would never have been enough to lessen my sentence. Don’t regret protecting yourself.”

Neville moves closer. “I didn’t hold back to protect myself.”

Draco’s smiling again. “I know. But I wanted you to protect yourself, and I’m glad you did, even if that hadn’t been your intention.”

There’s a sinking feeling in Neville’s stomach, but he has to say the words. They’ve kept him awake through so many nights. Even back then he’d pondered the matter enough to make him feel sick.

“How could you do so much for me, and so little for anyone else?” he whispers.

Draco closes his eyes, still resting his forehead against the bars. “I wonder that myself sometimes.”

“I hate this,” Neville breathes, touching the bars and hating that they separate them. 

That draws a pathetic chuckle from Draco. “You and me both. But this is just how things are. You need to leave now. There’s no point in staying.”

Neville takes in the sag of his shoulders. “I could stay for a little while. Keep you company.”

Draco meets his gaze. “I’d rather you left.”

“Are you sure?”

Draco nods and looks away. “Please.”

It’s the last thing Neville wants to do, knowing that Draco will be shifted to Azkaban the next day. But if Draco’s saying ‘please’, then he has to listen. There’s always more going on in Draco’s head than he lets anyone see, and Neville can only imagine how bad it must be when he’s facing Azkaban the next day.

“Thank you,” he says. “For everything you did for me. I wouldn’t have made it through that year without you.”

Draco steps close enough to the bars to reach through and grasp Neville’s hand. “I wouldn’t have made it through either. Without you.”

Neville’s not entirely sure Draco’s happy he made it through, given where he’s going, but then, he’s not brave enough to ask him.

“Try not to lose hope in there,” he murmurs. “You’ll still have at least one friendly face when you get out. Time won’t change that.”

Draco nods, and then turns and walks over to his bed without saying anything more. It’s Neville’s cue to leave, but he lingers for a moment.

It feels like there are more things to say, to ask about. To hear. It’s so unfair that everything they’d had, and anything they might have had, is suddenly over now. If he even tries to write to Draco in Azkaban, he knows he won’t get a response. Draco has done nothing if not impress on him his desire for Neville to step back and not spend any more time on him.

If there’s even the slightest chance that doing that will actually help Draco somehow, then he has to go along with what he wants. Even if he disagrees. Even if it hurts.

“I’m going to miss you,” he says softly, turning and walking away before he can talk himself out of it.

“I already miss you,” Draco whispers, almost too soft to hear, just before Neville passes through the privacy wards, and then hears nothing further.

**The End.**

**Author's Note:**

> **Please do not ask me to write more in the comments, this is a completed work.**


End file.
